84 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
feasibility of which was doubted by many, and after travelling all 
night with them to save time, we had the pleasure of seeing them 
restored to liberty in a new country within twenty-four hours of 
securing the first one. As the modus operandi has been fully 
detailed elsewhere,* it is unnecessary to repeat a description of 
the hunt. Suffice it to say that in the following spring, through 
the exertions of Mr. E. N. Buxton, one of the Verderers of 
Epping Forest, a few more were obtained from Dorsetshire and 
turned out in the forest, where, being well looked after by the 
keepers, they have since roamed undisturbed, and have increased 
in number every year. 
The keepers in Dorsetshire do not concur in the generally 
accepted belief that the Roe is monogamous, asserting that in 
the breeding season they have often seen a buck consorting with 
two and sometimes three does. This does not tally with the 
statements of foresters in Scotland and Germany, where the 
habits of the Roe-deer have been attentively studied, and may be 
an error of observation, the animals seen with the buck in the 
rutting-season being possibly a doe with a fawn, or fawns, which 
would not breed. The buck remains the winter through with 
the doe and fawns until he begins to change his grey winter coat, 
when he leaves her, and roams alone. 
The does bring forth their young in April and May, generally 
two, male and female, very rarely three,t and these, like the 
young of other species of deer, are at first speckled with white. 
The white spots disappear in a few weeks, and the colour then 
resembles that of the parent. In the ‘‘ bedding season,” as it is 
termed, the doe retires to some quiet and secluded spot, and on 
the birth of the kids covers them over so carefully that they are 
very rarely found. 
One of the brothers Stuart, who enjoyed such unrivalled 
opportunities for observing the habits of the wild animals of 
Scotland, thus graphically describes the bed of a Roe :— 
“In the middle of the thicket there was a group of young trees 
growing out of a carpet of deep moss, which yielded like a down pillow. 

* “The Field,’ 5th April, 1884. See also ‘Transactions of the Essex Field 
Club,’ 1887, pp. 46—62. 
+ See ‘The Field,’ 2nd Sept. 1871. 
